Thursday, April 24, 2008

When I was a youngster we spent some time down in Houston where I picked up a postcard similar to this one, a Texas-sized ego trip for the locals. I probably still have the card buried under a pile of junk in the office but sometimes it's easier to find things online than under your junk. I recently discovered Card Cow and found a similar postcard in their maps section. Anyway if you're looking for one of those vintage map postcards there's lots of good stuff on their site.

By the way, I think my Texas card had a little extension to the Atlantic Ocean so they could border the US on 4 sides.

Also note the Colorado/Wyoming switcheroo-oh well who can tell those rectangles apart anyway?

Thursday, April 17, 2008

It's an exciting week at Comedy Central as the Colbert Report is in Philadelphia for next week's Pennsylvania primary. The most striking feature of his Philadelphia set is a ridiculous map of Pennsylvania. Below is a video where he explains the map and Ben Franklin demonstrates early GIS map zooming capabilities (slow load warning)

By the way if youse want to better understand the Philly accent click here - the pictures will really help! You'll also some good cheesesteak info on those pages.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Next week the Association of American Geographers holds their annual meeting here in Boston, a city so confusing even a geographer can get lost. The folks at Radical Cartography put out the map below to try and help demystify the "squares" of Boston. In Boston a square is not actually shaped like a square as it is in places like Philadelphia and Savannah. A square is a place where streets come at you from all kinds of directions. If you're crazy enough to try driving through one of them you have about a 10% chance of ending up where you want and about an 85% chance of ending up frustrated, angry or in a pile of twisted metal (these stats have not been verified).

Of course the map below won't help you find your way much either. You're better off taking the T and using their map. What this map does accomplish is to indicate where all these squares are. People here navigate by square names and they are omitted from most maps. So when someone tells to to go to Copley Square for the AAG meeting you'll know where to go. And if they tell you about a great donut shop in Union Square you'll at least be able to narrow it down to two places.

Some of these square names may be a bit too literal - yes Newton Corner is technically called "Nonantum Square" but nobody really calls it that (causes confusion with Nonantum Village). And J. Elliot? C'mon! We all know it's "The Dudley". Anyway if nothing else the map is an alternate view of Boston from a local perspective. So welcome to town geographers, have a lovely stay and don't venture too far on your own without a good map or you may get lost in some confusing square like this one.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

The thing below is a map of sorts. Not the prettiest thing you'll ever see and only "waguely" understandable. Still it would be cool to see it as a 3D model so you could look from all angles and see all the different connections. I forget where I originally found it but it's posted on Flickr. If you click it it will tell you in the title that it shows "Road Traffic" between Swedish counties, however a reading of the text below indicates that it is actually showing the tonnage of goods transported. You will also get some more info and the author (Arenamontanus).Not knowing my Swedish counties as well as a geographer should I downloaded the county map below right from World Atlas. Note that there is at least one mistake on the county map - Dalarna County is labeled Kopparberg which is actually a town located in adjacent Orebro County.

Realizing that this blog layout doesn't lend itself to looking at these maps side by side I took the liberty of making my own image to compare the two maps - Click below to get a larger image - if that helps any.